Learning To Accept When You Need A Write-Off Day

You might have noticed that I tent to write a lot about how to boost your mood, be more productive, be happier, be a better version of yourself and blah blah blah blah blah.

I like to try and be positive where I can because otherwise life can just overwhelm you and take you down and then hello I am never getting up again.

But y’know what? It’s OK to admit that some days there is no silver lining – some days, well… some days are just fucking shit.

Some days there is no going back. Some days you’ve just got to accept that you can’t be some dragon-slaying, girl-bossing, gold-plated queen of the millennial children. Because some days you just need to let yourself crumble. And, more than that, you’ve got to own the crumbling.

I had big plans last Friday. Finishing off a couple of blog posts, getting an eye test, taking a coat back in town, taking some stuff to the charity shop. I mean, nothing ground-breaking, but lots of to-do list box ticking.

And I woke up and I was like lol nope.

I mean, I should have realised the day was a write off when I attempted to make the bed at 7.45am and got so enraged that I roared like an actual real-life dinosaur just because the quilt has slid down inside the covers a bit.

Big apols to my neighbours, contrary to the evidence we’re not actually harboring a pet T-Rex.

I dressed in jeans that don’t fit properly, a jumper that attracts 97% of the cat hair in the house, and a coat that could keep an entire family of seven warm in minus ten degrees.

I made it to the eye test (got two new pairs of glasses on order for this week – went for the exact same ones I had before because I was long past the point of decision-making) and then came home and tore off my clothes and lay on the sofa in my underwear and cried.

V grown-up. V sophisticated. V much got my shit together.

But despite the fact I sound like a complete and utter dipstick, you all know the kind of days I’m talking about. I knew I was feeling like I was desperately sinking from the get-go and I tried every method in the HG life rule book to stop myself from having a write-off day.

I WORE RED LIPSTICK. I listened to Little Mix’s ‘Power’ on full blast in the car. I made a beeline for a Starbucks Christmas cup the minute I’d parked in town. I did all the little things that I know make a huge difference to my mood and yet… and yet I still had to admit defeat.

I still felt myself snap in two, somewhere around the point where I was dragging my foundation off my face as I hurled my sweaty jumper over my head.

I’ve written before about the importance of taking mental health sick days (you can spy that over here), but this is something different, this is accepting that we can’t be the super human version of ourselves every single day.

This is accepting that everyone needs time off to breathe, to step back, and to heal and that it is entirely normal.

To accept that not every day can be our best day and not every day can be productive, no matter how much we will it to in our heads.

Because, and this might shake you to your core, we’re not actually robots. We’re not machines – we are people, we are humans.

On Friday I gave myself half an hour to dwell in my own self-pity. To lay still and get the bad boy ol’ body temperate back to a happy place. To relax, to practice my hypnobirthing breathing. To go back to a calm and in-control-of-myself place, and then I made the decision that it would become a write-off day.

A day where I pushed back all the tasks and goals I’d set myself and accept that actually, it would be better for me to do nothing. To drive to Sainsbury’s for snacks (going through a v big mango phase right now), and to make myself a little happy soothing spot on the sofa with tea, cats and Air Crash Investigation.

We’re always in such a rush to achieve and to be more than we already are, that we sometimes forget that taking time out to do absolutely nothing, can actually be more beneficial than feeling that adrenaline rush that comes from flying through a to-do list with flying colours.

It feels good to be on top of your life chores and to be progressing towards whatever it is you want from life, but it also feels good to step back and realise you don’t have to do that every day.

And so this is your reminder that you’re not failing if you need to step back. You’re not worth any less because you nailed a very fabulous zero of the things you’d planned to over the weekend.

There is no shame in admitting defeat in the battle against your own life, some days you just don’t have the energy to put on your war paint and take on the world and that’s just absolutely bloody A-OK.